Dark Hollow by Brian Keene Read Free Book Online

looked at me, and then went back to sleep. I reopened the file and tried writing again, but the cursor just kept blinking.
    “Fuck this.”
    I shut the computer off, went outside, and walked down to the gas station on the corner to get a pack of cigarettes. The weather was still nice, but my mood had soured.
    The door beeped as I walked in. Leslie Vandercamp was on duty at the register, just like she was every weekday from eight to five. Every month she dyed her hair a different color. Yesterday it had been auburn. Now it was hot pink.
    “Hey, Adam.” She smiled, cracking her gum.
    “Dig the hair,” I said.
    “Thanks. Did it last night.”
    “It’s very pink.”
    She laughed. “Start the new book yet?”
    I opened the cooler and grabbed a soda. “Don’t ask.”
    “That bad, huh?” She rang up a customer buying gas and lottery tickets, while I got in line. I liked Leslie. She was a single mom in her early twenties, with a two-year-old son at home. She’d met the father at the Maryland Line Bar, and never saw him again after that because two days later he was killed in a car wreck. His blood alcohol level had been the equivalent of a brewery.
    Leslie read all my books, and over the years she’d become my sounding board for story ideas. Plus, she kept me supplied with cigarettes, which made her the third most important woman in my life, after my wife and my editor.
    Eventually the customer left, and Leslie turned her attention back to me. “Writer’s block?”
    “Yeah.” I nodded. “Bad.”
    She looked surprised. “I thought you didn’t believe in writer’s block.”
    “I do now.”
    She reached above the counter and automatically pulled down two packs of my brand of cigarettes, without my even asking for them. Like I said, she was good. I paid her for the soda and smokes. As she handed me back my change, Leslie frowned.
    “You okay, Adam? You don’t so look good.”
    “Think I might be getting sick,” I lied. “A cold or something.”
    She glanced outside. “In this weather? That sucks. It’s beautiful outside. Almost feels like summer.”
    We made small talk for a few more minutes. Leslie was excited. She told me about the big date she had lined up for Wednesday night with some guy named Michael Gitelson, how she’d bought a new outfit and her mom was going to babysit for her.
    Another regular, an old man named Marvin, walked in. He picked up a newspaper, saw Leslie and me talking, and smiled.
    “Watch what you say to this guy, Leslie. He’ll put it in his next book!”
    He laughed, and I smiled politely and wished death upon him, because all writers hear things like that, and it gets really annoying. Then I told Leslie I’d see her same time tomorrow, said good-bye to Marvin, and left.
    When I got home I knew I still wouldn’t be able to write, so I decided to mow the lawn instead. It didn’t really need cutting yet, but there’s something about that first mowing of spring that really makes you feel good, the smell of fresh-cut grass and the feel of the mower in your hands and the neat, symmetrical rows. I thought maybe some time spent doing that would kick-start the idea machine inside my head.
    I made sure the mower had enough oil and gas, and then I rolled it out into the driveway. I primed it, pulled the cord, and it started on the second tug. If my neighbor Merle was watching, it would really give him something to curse about, after the trouble he’d had with his earlier that morning.
    Remembering Merle’s outburst made me think about what had happened in the woods again. Things had seemed so normal at that point. My neighborhood was operating the way it was supposed to. Merle cursing and Paul Leger ski flying down the alley with eighties metal blasting from his truck’s speakers—these were everyday things. They were safe. Mundane. They weren’t supposed to lead to what I’d seen in the forest.
    But in hindsight, even at that point things had beenweird. I’d heard the pipes